What does the demand for the respect of the value framework of human rights bring to public educational institutions?

dr. Mojca Kovač Šebart

Summary:  The article discusses the concept of human rights and duties in the context of education. The first section maintains that human rights cannot be understood only as a legal norm, but also, and especially, as an ethical norm. It is a concept integrating the foundations of contemporary social morality and, as such, also presents certain demands related to teaching, that is, education. Among other things, this means that human rights as a fundamental value matrix of contemporariness should be established as a solid and unambiguous point of certainty from which the moral-educational practice of democratic public schools derives, and upon which it is based. The second part of the article provides concrete examples to illustrate how the value framework requires educators to impart consensually agreed and constitutionally binding cultural norms, as well as the ensuing principles and values, to the participants in the educational process, thus educating them in accordance with the agreed principles and values, and insisting on adherence to these principles and values. The author strongly emphasizes that schools should not neglect the fact that the values upon which the Constitution and international conventions (based on the concept of human rights and duties) are founded are not a coincidentally selected set of values. These concepts are not a simple list; rather, they are a network of interrelated values and norms that support one another, and whose relevance has been demonstrated over an extended period of time. Moreover, their status for Slovenia as a state has acquired a formal character.